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War crimes tribunal jails 2 high-ranking Bosnian Serbs

McClatchy News Service

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Two former high-level Bosnian Serbs were each sentenced to 22 years in jail by a United Nations war crimes court on Wednesday over atrocities committed during the Bosnian war in the 1990s.

The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia convicted Mico Stanisic, a former interior minister of the Bosnian Serb region of Srpska, and Stojan Zupljanin, a former senior security chief, on crimes against humanity and war crimes charges.

They participated in acts of torture, unlawful detention, wanton destruction of towns and villages, and plunder of property between April and December 1992 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to the court. Both said they were innocent of the charges.

Stanisic and Zupljanin were confidants of the former Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who is also on trial at the ICTY on genocide charges.

The Bosnian war of the mid-1990s killed some 100,000 people and displaced millions.